As a small business, your website should be an active marketing and sales tool for your business rather than an online brochure. As a result, you will need to have certain functions on your website in order for it to make your website more of an active marketing tool for your business. In this posting, I will discuss some of these top functions you will need on your business website.
1) Blog
If you are a business, small or large, this goes without saying…. If you want to get serious about your business, you will need to add something that says you are serious about your business. A blog does this in a number of different ways:
- Builds credibility and branding – a blog is a great way of showcasing your knowledge of your subject. The platform allows you to share unique ways you have of approaching solutions to your target market’s problems and present them in a way that is going to connect more strongly with your target market.
- Improves your websites SEO – Blogs are naturally set up to give your website better SEO, which in turn improves your rankings, and links coming into your website when you reference other blogs.
- Conveniently adds fresh content to your website which keeps visitors coming back and the search engines happy.
2) Social Network Integration
Your blog should automatically update your social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Most blogs now have this capability. You should also have social networking buttons on your website so it is easy for people to sign up on your social networks from your website. There are many free scripts available that will allow you to easily add this functionality to your website.
3) Email signup list
This function will allow you to collect your visitors information so you can stay connected with those visitors that haven’t purchased anything from your website, and that is the vast majority of your website visitors. You should have your autoresponder system set up to send at least 7 emails to your list members.
4) Website Analytics
There are many scripts that you can use to find out how many visitors you’ve had on your website, where they came from and how long they have stayed on your web site. These visitors will give you an important insight as to how effective your website is with your target market. This is crucial if you want to begin improving your website’s effectiveness, and increase the business you get from your website.
5) E commerce
If you are a business, you should be selling something from your website, even if it is an information product, or a membership. This generates residual revenue for your business and will make your website more valuable should you ever decide to sell it down the road. It will also add to the credibility of your business and build your customer list so that you have a customer base to upsell your future products and services to.
With these 5 things in on your website, you will be well on the road to turning your website into a more active marketing tool for your business.
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